Slap This!

I cleaned up my storage room recently. The reason, of course, was to make room for... more storage.

I’ve come to realize my home has become an expensive storage locker, packed to the brim with old camping supplies, personal documents dating back to 1873, food dehydrators and the occasional, dusty Ab-Master thrown in for good measure. This weekend we’ll be drawing straws to determine which one of us will now have to move into our backyard.

Here’s an observation. No matter what item you choose to store in the most hard to get at place, you can be certain it will be the first thing you need once you get everything packed tightly away.

I’m no stranger to fitting a lot of stuff into a small space, after all I ran a radio station Creative Department for many years, writing thousands of commercials that had to fit into thirty-second time slots.

Unlike the valuable tools they really are, unfortunately, many advertisers see broadcast commercials and print ads like marketing storage lockers. In an effort to utilize the space they’ve purchased to the fullest, they cram everything they can into their commercial real estate.

Any fans of Celebrity Apprentice will have seen this result in the downfall of Team Tenacity last Sunday night. Those who aren’t fans of Celebrity Apprentice can clip that last reference out and store it away somewhere.

Rule number one in advertising, less is more. (a saying I particularly like, by the way)

I’ve seen it happen many times in print advertising, where the game is often to fill every last ounce of space with information.

Client: “We’ve booked a postage stamp sized ad for this weekend’s paper.”

Me: “Great, what are we putting in it?”

Client: “The first three chapters of War and Peace.”

Me: “There’s not enough room for that!”

Client: “Fine, leave out the table of contents.”

I think using colour in print advertising is a great idea, but I’ve seen colour in print ads handled much the same way as space. Advertisers pay extra for colour, and darn it, they want to use that colour! The next thing you see is a print ad with so many colours plastered all over the place, it looks like Walt Disney threw up on the printing press.

We’ve all been in our cars, driving, when suddenly the radio station goes dead. What’s the first thing you do? You pay attention. You notice the dead air. The same way you notice the ”white space” in the newspaper.

Consumers respond to a message that is clear, concise and easy to understand. Thirty-second radio rants that come out sounding like the Chipmunks on steroids won’t get heard. Print ads that look more like business plans than advertising don’t get digested. The best ads are the ones that deliver a simple, often single message without clutter.

That means white space is our friend and silence really is golden. Sometimes what you take out of an ad is even more important than what you put in it.

Fill your ad to the brim with messages and I guarantee the most important one will wind up in a place where nobody can find it.

Which reminds me, time to sign off, I’ve got a Slap Chop to pack up!